Many artists have already contributed to the Basic Fantasy Project, and hopefully many more will join in. To help those artists who are new to the Project, here are some tips:

-- Interior art pieces are always grayscale. Whenever possible, we prefer color art for covers, but sometimes we must take what we are given.

-- Do not create or submit artwork in "black and white." In a true monochrome image, every pixel is either exactly black or exactly white. Grayscale images reproduce better with the print-on-demand equipment Lulu and CreateSpace use.

-- If you draw your art on paper and then scan it, you may scan in grayscale or full color. Full color scans of line art ("black and white" drawings) work just fine.

-- Please be sure your scanner software is set to at least 300 dpi. If the drawing is small, I recommend scanning at 600 dpi. Higher resolution scans are not necessary, and will result in large email messages that may not come through properly.

-- If you scan to JPEG format, set the quality as high as it will go (typically 100%) as JPEG will lose some quality otherwise. PNG scans are better as that format is always lossless, but either will work. TIF and BMP formats are not recommended, but again, we'll take what we get if it's at all possible.

-- If you create your artwork digitally (i.e. on the computer), your original should be a minimum of 975 pixels wide for single-column reproduction, or 1,950 pixels wide for full-page printing. Larger is okay, I'll resize the image down as needed; smaller images will have to be scaled up, which may result in unacceptable quality issues.

-- If you use a true drawing program rather than a painting program (for example, Inkscape), you generally don't need to worry about the size issues described above. However, I can really only accept drawings in SVG format. If your program does not save in SVG format, you'll need to export the image, in which case it should be 975 pixels wide or more for a single column, 1,950 pixels or more for a full-page image, just as explained above.

-- Name your file like this: "Drawing Title by John Doe.png" If you don't include your name in the filename, I'll just have to put it there anyway. For example, my copy of the original cover art is entitled "Scribbled Dragon by Erik Wilson.jpg" so that I never forget where it came from; while it's unlikely I'd ever forget that one, there are many more images I have to keep track of, so the artist's name is critical.

-- Art you submit to the Basic Fantasy Project remains your property. By submitting your art, you agree to give me (Chris Gonnerman) an irrevocable, non-exclusive license to use that artwork in documents published by me which are part of the Basic Fantasy Project. Such publishing includes the free PDFs I offer on this site as well as print publication at or near cost. The license you grant me is non-exclusive, as I said; you may resell the art as you see fit.

Hopefully this answers all your questions. However, if you do think of something not addressed above, please PM me and I'll consider revisions as needed.